The fatal cost of a packet of smokes

Page Tools

It is unlikely that the former Tasmanian Premier Jim Bacon, who died yesterday aged 54, ever thought he would have something in common with the macho Hollywood film star Yul Brynner. In death they are linked not just as victims of the same disease but also through the powerful messages each delivered about their premature departure from this world.

Jim Bacon was a dynamic and effective state leader. During the five years he was premier of Tasmania that state's economic fortunes improved markedly. He oversaw a reduction in the unemployment rate to its lowest level in two decades, turned a decline in population into a net gain and witnessed a real estate and property boom. Australia's smallest state, so long isolated from and often forgotten by the mainland, became a place of optimism and growth - "a different place" was how Mr Bacon described it.

Tasmania's improved fortunes stemmed in part from the sense of excitement and optimism Jim Bacon was able to generate among Tasmanians. His leadership was not without controversy. Tasmanian Labor's approach to logging in old-growth forests and the appointment of former diplomat Richard Butler as the state's governor were among its more controversial aspects.

AdvertisementAdvertisement

Mr Bacon was an unlikely torchbearer of Tasmania's economic rejuvenation. Melbourne-born and educated, the one-time student radical crossed Bass Strait in 1980 to head up the state branch of the then militant Builders Labourers' Federation. His transition from "main-lander" to a devoted and, more importantly in a parochial sense, accepted Tasmanian was a key to his eventual success in the political mainstream. His popularity and support earned Mr Bacon the nickname "Good News Jim".

But in the end, personally, the news was not good at all. Mr Bacon, a long-time smoker, contracted an aggressive form of lung cancer. From the time he made public the diagnosis and relinquished the leadership until his death was a mere 118 days. Who knows what Mr Bacon's potential was and what his political future might have been. The tragedy, of course, is that his illness was preventable - a fact Mr Bacon acknowledged. "I accept full responsibility for the condition I now have," he said back in February. "I have been an idiot. I have not listened. I have kept smoking. I now accept that I am in large part paying the price for that stupidity."

Countless ordinary people die for every well-known smoker who falls victim to a smoking-related disease. The latter can and occasionally do find the strength to acknowledge the smoker's deadly folly. Yul Brynner famously recorded a powerful 30-second anti-smoking television advertisement that was screened after his death from lung cancer in 1985. Jim Bacon delivered the same message about smoking to Australians shortly before he died. His advice was poignant and succinct: "Don't."